Toby Christie

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The Stewart-Haas Racing team will be racing with heavy hearts in Michigan International Speedway this weekend, as one of their own — Shawn Soules passed away on Tuesday night. According to motorcyclelawyernorthcarolina.com, Soules was riding his motorcycle near Statesville, NC when he was struck by a BMW that failed to yield to the motorcycle. Continue reading “Stewart-Haas Racing Mourning Loss of Team Member Shawn Soules”

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Don’t look now, but Chase Elliott is methodically putting together the best season of his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career. Elliott, 23, took his fifth-consecutive top-five finish Sunday at Pocono Raceway, which is the longest such streak in his career to this point. Still, Elliott isn’t shy about wanting more.

“I’m proud of the effort,” said Elliott. “We’ve had some good NAPA Chevrolet’s the last couple of weeks. We’ve been good, just not great and you have to be great to win these things. I’ll go to work and try to do a better job, and we’ll see what we can do next week.”

That’s not the only thing that makes this season impressive however, as Elliott is putting up career numbers in just about every category so far in 2019.

With more than a half of a season remaining, Elliott has already matched his best mark for poles in a season with two, he has an average finish of 9.2 (his career best is a 12.0 in 2017), and he has led an impressive 402 laps, which is just 158 shy of his all-time best in a season.

Additionally, Elliott sits third in the championship standings (his best point finish was fifth in 2017) but obviously with the current Playoff format that could change drastically before it’s all said and done. Elliott also has just one DNF so far. He has recorded four in each of the last two seasons.

Even with how good the season has been for Elliott, he believes there is room for improvement within the Hendrick Motorsports organization.

“We’d like to be just a little better,” Elliott explained after the Pocono 400. “I feel like we’re really close. We’re just not there. It’s nice to be disappointed with running in the top-five these past few weeks.”

As we head toward the Summer stretch, the competition may want to hope Elliott and the No. 9 team don’t find any more speed. Last season, in the second half of the year Elliott scored three victories. If he can mirror that, this definitely will be the best season of the Georgia-native’s young career.

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Through the first 13 races of 2019, Daniel Hemric had been chasing Ryan Preece for the lead of the NASCAR Rookie of the Year point standings. However, after a solid 13th-place finish at Pocono, Hemric now takes over the lead.

Hemric started the day from the 23rd position in one of the more unique paint schemes on the grid — the splashy Kalahari Resorts car.

Hemric struggled for the majority of the race with an ill-handling car, but the 28-year old did not relent. Continue reading “Daniel Hemric Takes Rookie Point Lead With Solid Day in Pocono”